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\title{Statement of Purpose}
\author{Qi Wang}
\date{Ph.D. Applicant}

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To do exciting and influential research is exactly the reason why I apply for a Ph.D. program. My research interests include software engineering and programming languages. To become an exceptional researcher in these areas, I am strongly motivated to receive rigorous training and cultivate independent research ability to explore challenging problems.

My interest in computers dates back to my elementary school days. Born in a small city in China, I was lucky enough to have a computer much earlier than my peers. Being a curious boy, I was not content just to play computer. Instead, I was eager to know how the computer works both in software and hardware. From reading computer magazines, I got to know much more knowledge about software, such as building websites and hacking. Those experiences aroused my great interest and invited me to delve into its broad field.  For this reason, I chose software engineering as my major in university without hesitation. I was one of the only four students who were admitted into this major in my university from my province, which had more than 900,000 graduates that year, in the National University Entrance Examination.

During my undergraduate studies, I was driven by my curiosity and interest to do well in all my major courses. I served as the leader or core member in most of my course projects, and many of them were awarded as the best projects in class. I also seized every chance to explore further knowledge. I joined a research lab led by Prof. Alei Liang and designed algorithms for multi-robots to form patterns using swarm intelligence. This program, which was sponsored by the National Undergraduate Innovation Program, offered me the opportunity to start research earlier than others and it was my first exposure to academic research which gave me great inspiration and enlightenment, especially when our mini robots were performed to form a letter. Because of my outstanding performance in university, I was awarded the honor of Excellent Graduate of Shanghai province and was admitted to graduate school waiving entrance examination for ranking first in the department.

I was given the honor to join the STAP research group led by Prof. Jianjun Zhao since my senior year. I devoted myself into the research of program analysis and bug detection. Because much information is now embedded or hidden inside JavaScript code in web applications, I worked with Prof. Zhao and Prof. Jingyu Zhou on developing algorithms to extract such information. I spent much time in the laboratory doing surveys and verifying different ideas. We finally came up with the idea to combine static program analysis with dynamic execution to achieve our goal. The idea is simple but innovative. After months of hard work on implementation and experiment, the outcome was satisfying. I presented this exciting work at the ESEC/FSE 2013 New Ideas track, and the audiences were attracted by this interesting idea and its promising preliminary result. This project made me feel more enthusiastic to further my study in software engineering.

I attached much importance to work on real projects. While attending university, I worked in Intel Asia-Pacific R\&D Ltd as a software development engineer intern for two years. In Intel, I participated in the OpenSource Private Cloud (OSPC) project which is based on OpenStack. Working in the company helped me hone my programming skills greatly and learn many practical systems and tools. I also obtained a much better understanding about industry process. I spent a lot of time delving into cloud computing in the company, which is the reason why my graduate GPA was not as high as that of my undergraduate study. While the job helped me develop a thorough insight into industry-scale projects, the industry environment could not satisfy my desire for innovative research. Rather than serving as a mercenary in implementing someone else's vision, I am more excited to solve open-ended problems of my choosing. I therefore believed that I must return to the academic world for further growth and made up my mind to further my study abroad.

With my target set ahead, I quitted the job and focused all my efforts on research. Due to my outstanding academic performance and serious research attitude, I was recommended to work as a research assistant in the National institute of Informatics (NII) in Japan for 3 months. I was supervised by Prof. Zhenjiang Hu on using parallel programming to solve tree and graph problems. It was a very challenging project for me as I had little experience of relevant theory. However, my ability to teach myself and conduct independent research allowed me to attain competence quickly in an area that I may know very little about at first. Through extensive reading of papers and materials, I finally proposed a framework which provides automatic parallelization for graph optimization problems using tree decomposition and tree parallelism, and we published the work in FHPC 2013. NII offered me the access to advanced research environment and the opportunity to work with world-leading researchers. This experience made me more determined to devote myself to research.


I gave presentations and talks in several conferences and workshops. I also served as the student volunteer for ESEC/FSE 2013. It is always exciting to communicate ideas with other researchers. These activities not only got me much more involved in research, but also improved my skills of communication and cooperation. Furthermore, attending international conferences helped me to realize the wide gap between America and China, since most speeches were given by researchers from America. This strengthened my determination to do research in academia in America.

In the future, I wish to earn a Ph.D. degree in computer science and later obtain a position in the academia for research and teaching. I would like to further my research on software engineering. Along with studying xx, I am also attracted to xx. 

I believe that Xx University is the ideal place for my study. Your Department occupies a forefront position in computer science. There are many world-renown researchers and laboratories working on xx, which are the sub-domains that I am particularly interested in. What attracts me most is that there is a large programming languages group with many professors with whom I would like to work, including Professors Harper and Aldrich. Because I find it important to talk to with diverse areas of focus than my own, I also like the diversity of XX's computer science research

I am eager to be admitted into your Ph.D. program of Computer Science. As a student, I am confident that I have well prepared myself with core curricula in the field of computer science. As a researcher, I am enthusiastic to learn various subjects and willing to tackle challenging problems. Now, with the desire to know more about the world, I am applying to your university and seeking for the opportunity to explore further in the field of computer science!

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